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a good model,’ and I said, ‘I am ready—right now if you want—to be-
come part of Finland! But we are talking about Azerbaijan.”
13
Gukasian’s story suggests that the format of the peace negotia
tions between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents may be badly
flawed. Both presidents have been concentrating on finding a compre
hensive or “package” agreement under which all issues can be resolved
at once. They have adopted this approach partly because of the sense of
urgency they feel about President Aliev’s failing health. But it also
stems from the controlling authoritarian
instincts of two leaders, who
are unwilling to let the process out of their grip.
Having failed to find a comprehensive plan, the only logical way
out is to pursue a “step-by-step” agreement in which some smaller
steps—the opening of the Armenia-Nakhichevan border, the return of
small areas of occupied land—get the peace
process under way on the
ground. Such symbolic, incremental steps carry their own risks, but they
could begin to give society a stake in peaceful cooperation, rather than
defiance and cynicism. They could begin to thaw the frozen landscape.
Even
without the war, Armenia and Azerbaijan leaders have cooper
ated very little over the past hundred years. In Soviet times, they would
conduct most of their business in and through Moscow. Since then, the
south Caucasus has been a tangle of front lines, closed borders, dead
ends, and isolated enclaves. In any real
political or economic sense, it is
not a proper region at all.
This was not always the case. The eighteenth-century Armenian
troubadour Sayat-Nova wrote in Armenian, Georgian, and the
lingua
franca of
the Caucasus of the time, Azeri (some of his Azeri poems
were even written in Armenian script) and moved happily between
the different nations and regions of the Caucasus. He thought of him-
self as a bridge builder. In one of his Azeri poems he elegizes on his
posthumous fate:
Mercy on the old master building a bridge,
The passer-by may lay a stone to his foundation.
I have sacrificed my soul, worn out my life, for the nation.
A brother may arrange a rock upon my grave.
14
Sayat-Nova’s biographer, Charles Dowsett, speculates on the use of
the word “nation” in the poem:
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What nation? If the Armenian nation, or the Georgian, why is the
poem in Azeri? It would
seem his horizons are broader, and that he is
thinking in terms such as a Caucasian unity, in which Armenian, Geor
gian and Azeri might live together in harmony, under the beneficent
rule of a wise leader like Irakli II,
and Azeri, as the common language,
was the best vehicle for the message.
15
In a few lines Sayat-Nova spells out a different kind of future for Ar
menians and Azerbaijanis, locked in their self-destructive states of fear
and defiance: a gentler future based on a much more harmonious past.
But sadly the poet’s message is not being heard.